Ethiopia is taking the best practices and experiences of various countries to scale-up its Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) program, and ensure economic transformation in all sectors. As TVET plays a crucial role in bringing economic growth through highly skilled and capable workforce, the government is working in collaboration with and gaining various experiences and practices from countries like Germany, South Korea, and China.
The relationship between Ethiopia and Korea is historical and intimate. A number of Ethiopian soldiers sacrificed their lives during the Korean War when Emperor Haileselassie sent 6037 troops (the Kagnew Battalion) as part of collective security mission.
Since then, the two countries’ partnership has been growing, be it in economic sphere or diplomatic domains. Currently, a number of Korean organizations are working in Ethiopia and Korea’s development support to Ethiopia is increasing. Ethiopia has also taken Korea’s development model to bring development and overall transformation.
Korea has been assisting Ethiopia’s development endeavors in various aspects, and Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) – Korea’s government agency dedicated to provide grant aid program of the Korean government – is working to combat poverty and support sustainable socioeconomic growth in Ethiopia by focusing on education, health, rural development and infrastructure, especially on the main Millennium Development Goals.
KOICA is providing targeted short and long term training programs to Ethiopia to nurture capable manpower. KOICA dispatches Ethiopians to share Korean experience and enhance the people to people relationship. Currently, KOICA has expanded its regional interventions all over Ethiopia mainly in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, SNNPR, Somali and Benshangul Gumuz states to benefit communities at large.
A workshop and panel discussion was held recently to discuss and share best practices of Korean War Veterans Juniors TVET Institute to expand them to others in Ethiopia.
On the occasion, KOICA Country Director, Doh Young Ah noted that TVET is a key national strategy in terms of bringing about economic growth through qualified human resource capabilities. The Ethiopian government, by putting emphasis on TVET institutions, is working to create competent, motivated, adaptable and innovative manpower to improve the productivity of enterprises and increase their competitiveness in the global market.
Skills development has played a critical role in economic growth and poverty reduction in every country, including Korea. If skill development programs are formulated and managed effectively, they could become paths for industrialization and economic transformation.
The country director stressed that many developing countries have developed TVET programs to overcome unemployment as it enables them to make investment on human capital and gain significant return.
In Ethiopian context, TVET has been crucial in creating competent labor force. The government has designed it to play a great role in the country’s economy and to reduce poverty, she stressed.
According to Zeru Sumur, Head of Addis Ababa City Government TVET Bureau, TVET is a sector with complex management, where all stakeholders and governments should work in collaboration to benefit the economy, industry and the country’s overall development.
It is indicated that more than 1100 technologies were copied in Addis Ababa TVET institutions in the last fiscal year, enabling the country to save more than 30 million birr from a single copied technology.
The aim of TVET program in Ethiopia is to make the country’s economy competitive. TVET is playing a key role in the social and economic sphere by providing 80 percent of trained and competent manpower in hotel and tourism, construction, manufacturing, management, agriculture, information communication, infrastructure and other sectors.
The fact that the country is an economic take-off stage, the country needs best experiences and practices from around the world to develop its industries effectively.
TVET training during the growth and transformation plans prioritize the leather, textile and garment, metal and agro-processing sectors. Despite the successes in producing trained and qualified manpower, many public TVET institutions still lack institutional capacity such as infrastructure, machinery, equipment and others to deliver quality TVET. The management of TVET and its integration with productive sectors has not also been satisfactory.
For instance, limited industrial awareness and cooperation, lack of willingness to sign memorandum of understanding and allocate appropriate trainers, machines, materials, and weak coordination with other sectors are among the main challenges of TVET.
According to Zeru, lack of adequate financing has been among the major challenges to the provision of quality TVET. This can also be attributed to the limited support of donors to TVET as compared to other education sectors and private investment. Hence, finance remains a challenge to scale up and improve TVET as it heavily depends on government’s budget.
It should be underlined that government financing alone cannot help in overcoming quality problems associated mainly with teachers’ capacity, machinery, equipments, and materials as well as in scaling-up best practices.
The improvement of TVET quality through competence-based TVET system requires certain key interventions. The interventions should include national qualifications framework, national occupational standards, curriculum design, teaching-learning and capacity assessment of TVET teachers and evaluators.
Moreover, integrating ICT, cooperative training, vocational guidance and counseling, supplying adequate human and material inputs and facilities, and providing accreditations to TVET institutions and programs and strong management and financing system are crucial to take the sector one step forward.
Currently, automotive, electricity, ICT, Agro-processing, textile and garment, hotel and tourism, light manufacturing, construction, welding and plumbing are the focus areas of Ethiopia’s TVET institutions.